Darryl’s acceptance of these people as they settled around Jackson’s Track placed him in conflict with his white family. Men would come to work out in the logging areas or at the mill. Readers are left to wonder at the skill and fortitude of both the horses and men as they struggled with the timber along narrow and slippery tracks. They logged the area and the stories of the precipitous journeys with the horses pulling huge ‘falled’ logs are arresting. Patiently she stitched the stories together and shaped the tale into an absorbing book about life on Jackson’s Track from 1937 when Darryl and Harry Tonkin bought 824 acres of timber country in Gippsland. His amazing life was captured when his grandchildren persuaded him to talk with their English teacher Carolyn Landon. There he chopped wood for his family and kept the billy boiling for old timers or relatives who dropped by. Jackson’s Track – Memoir of a Dreamtime Place by Daryl Tonkin & Carolyn Landon, Viking Books ISBN 2-8ĭarryl Tonkin’s link with the Australian bush was so strong that he left his dearly loved partner of many decades in the town of Drouin and retreated to his beloved home in the bush.
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